3. Add captions to your videos

Even though Facebook now auto-plays videos on the mobile News Feed with sound, it’s unclear how many people watch videos with the sound on. Facebook users can disable the auto-play-with-sound feature, and videos will auto-play without sound if the mobile phone is on silent mode.

My hunch is that most Facebook users still watch videos without sound.

If a viewer can’t understand your video without the sound, you would likely lose that viewer and the opportunity to convey your message to her.

To prevent that, you can add captions to your videos through Facebook. When you are uploading your video onto Facebook, there’s an option to upload a SRT file of your captions. You can also add captions to existing Facebook videos by editing the video.

4. Suggest viewers tap for sound

Another neat way to work around the silent auto-played Facebook videos is to suggest viewers tap for sound with a pop-up.

Pop-ups can sometimes be annoying so it has to be designed and timed appropriately to create a non-disruptive effect. 20th Century Fox (which I learned this tip from) showed a great example with their Kingsman trailer video:

The style of the pop-up is in line with the Kingsman theme (and similar to the style of the captions). It’s also well-timed as it doesn’t prevent you from seeing any crucial bits of the video (and it doesn’t take up too much space on the screen).

5. Focus on one key point

If you want to make a shareable video, focus on one easy-to-understand point.

High character limit for comments: It seems that you can type up for 8,000 characters for a Facebook comment. This makes it great for inviting your audience to share longer-form thoughts about your video.

For example, Airbnb encouraged its audience to share their favorite vacation mom story on their Mother’s Day video. As the character limit for comments is high, Airbnb’s audience could share much more about their stories than, say, on Twitter.

9. Give a preview of the video in your copy

Taking the time to watch a video can be a time commitment. Sometimes, it can help to provide a little information about your video in your copy so that people can quickly decide if it’d be worth their time to watch your video.

Facebook recommends “pulling out a key quote or moment from the video as the text component of your post” in order to set up the expectations of what will be seen in the video.

An informative copy about the video, coupled with a relevant thumbnail, can be a great formula for attracting people’s attention as they scroll through their News Feed.

Here’re a couple examples:

10. Add a call-to-action

Having a call-to-action (CTA) on your video is a great way to encourage engagement, drive traffic to your website, and even convert viewers into customers.

It might be common to think of CTAs as buttons to a signup form or website. But CTAs can be as simple as a sentence calling for an action, such as “Read the full blog post here: Link“.

In your post copy, you could include a link to your blog post or website and invite viewers to find out more information by clicking on the link. You could also simply ask your audience to share their thoughts as comments.

During the video, you could mention a CTA if you are talking in the video or use a text overlay (e.g. Learn more social media tips at blog.buffer.com). Wistia found that such mid-roll CTAs have the highest conversion rates.

At the end of the video, you could have a text overlay or a static image with a CTA and let the video play for a few seconds after the actual content ends.

For instance, Gary Vaynerchuk likes to include his share bear in the middle or at the end of his videos.

You could also add a CTA on your Facebook post itself if you boost the video. More on this below.

11. Tag other pages

Another feature you can use to try and spread your Facebook video is tagging other Pages that either contributed to the video or that you would like to make aware of the video.

It is important to keep the tagging relevant.

Here’re a few examples of “who to tag”:

People who contributed to the video directly – “Featuring Taylor Swift“

People that are mentioned in the video – “We love Harry Potter and here’s why.”

People who inspired you to make the video – “HT to Leo Widrich for the inspiration.”

People who are related to the video or that you would like to make aware of the video – “We would like to tag Buffer to take on the challenge next.”

To tag someone on Facebook, simply type the “@” symbol before the title of the Page or person you would like to tag and a few options should appear for you to pick.

12. Choose preferred audience for your videos

According to TechCrunch who studied the Facebook News Feed, relevance is a key factor that Facebook’s algorithm considers when ranking posts on users’ News Feed.

[Facebook’s algorithm] assigns each story a personalized relevancy score that’s different for each person that sees it, and puts the most relevant stories first.

Here’s the good news: Facebook has a feature to help you share your video to the most relevant audience!

Once you have uploaded your video onto Facebook (before you publish it), there’s an option in the lower-left corner to set your preferred audience for this video.

When you click on it, a pop-up will appear where you can set the following:

Preferred audience: This allows you to set the people you’d like to reach based on their interests and the Pages they’ve liked.For example, a sports retailer could choose interests such as “running” and “long distance running” for a video on a new long distance running shoes.

Audience restrictions: This allows you to limit who can see your video. Only people in audience group you’ve chosen can see your video (anywhere on Facebook).For example, a fashion retailer in Singapore could set the restrictions such that only female aged 25-35 in Singapore can see the video.

By setting your preferred audience and restricting who can see your video, your video will be shown to the most relevant audience, who will most likely watch your video and interact with your post (if you have set the right targeting).

13. Use insights to understand video performance

Facebook provides metrics like minutes viewed, video views, and average watch time, which can provide great insights into which videos generated the most engagement with your viewers.

Video Average Watch Time: The graph will show you the point at which the audience dropped off. Looking at that point to understand what made people stop watching might help you in creating better content.

10-Second Views: This is the number of people who have watched your video for 10 seconds (or to completion if your video is less than 10 seconds).

Post Engagement: This section will tell you the reach of your video and the engagement it has received.

14. Go live

If you want more people to watch your videos and see your Facebook posts, consider going live on Facebook.

When Facebook launched Facebook Live, it tweaked its algorithm to rank live videos more favorably as live videos kept people engaged.

As a first step, we are making a small update to News Feed so that Facebook Live videos are more likely to appear higher in News Feed when those videos are actually live, compared to after they are no longer live. People spend more than 3x more time watching a Facebook Live video on average compared to a video that’s no longer live.

Social Media Examiner also found that the more they went live on Facebook, the more their non-live content received exposure. Michael Stelzner, CEO and founder of Social Media Examiner, hypothesized that as their brand is in front of their fans more often, the fans would go to their Page to see their content more — even if the fans don’t watch the live video.

Here’s another bonus: Facebook would automatically record your live video and publish it on your Facebook Page or profile after the broadcast ends.

When we previously live-streamed our marketing strategy team meeting, the video generated more than 10,000 views on the first day. (We were surprised by it!)

15. Feature a video on your Page

Facebook allows you to feature a video in the “Videos” tab of your Page, which would auto-play. This can be a great way to showcase your best video to those who are interested in watching your videos.

Here’s how it looks like on our Page:

If you have not selected a featured video, Facebook would prompt you to choose.

If you want to change your featured video, click on the pen icon in the upper-right corner and select “Change Featured Video”.

16. Boost with Facebook ads

Facebook’s in-depth data on its users makes it a great platform for running ads to reach a larger audience with your video.

You can use Facebook ads to promote your videos to a specified target audience. Let’s say for example that you made a video about tables in Paris, France. Facebook will allow you to target people who have shown an interest in furniture and who live in Paris.

A benefit of using video ads is that you can add a call-to-action (CTA) button on the video post. To do that, you have to tick the “Add a website URL” box and fill up the fields. The preview on the right is how the video ad will look like.

Alternatively, you can boost any existing video by clicking on the “Boost Post” button on your video post.